MOL and E.ON will open in Romania 40 charging stations for electrical cars until 2020

The E.ON company with business in the utilities sector and MOL, producer and distributor of fuel will open in a regional partnership 40 charging stations for electrical cars in Romania until 2020 with funds received through the mechanism for interconnection of Europe, announced on Friday the Hungarian oil company.

On 23 June, the European Commission announced that the project NEXT-E was selected to receive funds through the mechanism for Europe interconnection with co-financing of 18.84 million euro to support the development of a charging network of electrical cars.

The project NEXT-E is made up of a consortium of the subsidiaries of the German group E.ON from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, six subsidiaries of MOL, Hrvaska elekropriveda of Croatia, PETROL of Slovenia and Croatia,, Nissan and BMW.

In Romania there will be installed in this project, 40 rapid charging stations for electrical cars out of which 19 will be installed by E.ON Energie Romania and 21 by MOL Romania.

‘The rapid charging stations will be placed on the premises of the MOL filling stations and will cover the important points on the route of three roads Arad-Bucuresti-Constanta (the IV Pan European corridor) Sebes –Targu Mures –Iasi and Suceava –Bucuresti –Giurgiu ( partially IX Pan European corridor) MOL said.

The announcement comes after the Rompetrol Downstream, led by the Kazah group KazMunayGas opened in May the first filling station equipped with charging stations for electrical cars in Bucuresti, with other seven stations of 50kW to be opened this year in Bucuresti, Baia Mare, Campulung Moldovenesc and Timisoare.

Romania has, at present, a weak infrastructure for the non-polluting cars charging with only some tens of charging stations in the whole country.

However, the latest official data show that the cars with ‘zero emissions’ are most wanted on the Romanian market.

The data of the Association of Producers and Importers of Cars (APIA) show that the number of hybrid and electrical cars bought by the Romanians in the first five months of this year increased by 185% against the similar period of last year, up to 717 units.

In 2016, in Romania there were sold 1,183 electrical and hybrid cars, as compared to 496 in 2015.

The first company which started an extended network of electrical stations in Romania is Kaufland, in partnership with the producer of renewable energy Renovatio.

Kaufland announced in August 2016 that they will have a network of 12 charging points in Romania by the end of this year.

Similarly, in January, Electrica, the company which owns three out of the eight regional electricity companies in Romania and OMV Petrom,the main oil company of Romania inaugurated the first charging station for electrical cars in a filling station, a pilot project.

The companies announced then that they will install charging points for electrical cars in Bucuresti, in four OMV filling stations and at the headquarters of OMV Petrom (Petrom City) and Electrica.